maintenance vs. useability

[Mark Gooch]

I was wondering if I could get some expert opinions from you.  I am
working on a new web site design and am trying to weigh ease of
maintenance vs. useability and access.

The main feature of the new design is going to be a navigational menu
along the side.  One logical approach would be to use frames and simply
have the menu in one of the frames.  This would provide for easy
maintenance.  However, I am trying to keep in mind users with
disabilities and their needs as well as the fact that frames can cause
problems for novices (i.e. lack of "bookmarkability",  printing
complications, etc.).  I also have the menu link for the section being
viewed stand out as a non-link so the user knows what page they are
viewing which wouldn't be possible with frames (unless I used javascript
which I don't want to do).  Another alternative is to use an image map.
However, I hesitate to use this once again because of users with
disabilities.  It would also mean dropping my navigational feature of
having the current page link stand out in the menu.  My last option,
which I am currently using, is to lay out the page using a table with
each page having its own menu.  The problem with this obviously is the
maintenance of about 100 pages if anything needs to be changed on the
navigational menu.

You can take a look at the site at:

http://www.law.csuohio.edu/lawlibrary/mgooch/test/

and I would appreciate any feedback.

Thanks
Mark



--
Mark D. Gooch                                Cleveland State University
Government Information Librarian   1801 Euclid Ave.
Cleveland-Marshall Law Library     Cleveland, Ohio  44115
(216)687-5579  Voice                    (216)687-5098  Fax
                            Mark.Gooch at law.csuohio.edu
                     http://www.law.csuohio.edu/lawlibrary/

"I guess we still have some bugs to work out,"
 --Bill Gates at Comdex 98 in Chicago as Windows98 crashed on him